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A normal school week in Singapore: what roads, buses and MRT looked like before the 21 November holidays

MOE schools finish Term 4 on Friday 20 November, and the school holidays run from Saturday 21 November to Thursday 31 December (junior colleges from 28 November). We have already written a plan ahead checklist for those weeks. This post does something different. It records what an ordinary term time week looked like in our data, so that we can compare it with the holidays once they have happened. We do not yet know what the holidays will change, if anything.

What we counted

The window is Monday 19 October to Friday 13 November, all of it in school term. It has 19 weekdays and 6 weekend days. We left out Monday 9 November, the Deepavali public holiday, and our PIE figures for Tuesday 3 November are missing, so that day is left out too. The weekends include Deepavali eve and Deepavali, on 7 and 8 November, which were not ordinary days. All times are Singapore time. Everything here comes from public data that PantauSivik logged: Land Transport Authority travel times, bus loads and platform crowd levels. These are our records of what we saw, not official statistics.

Expressways: the evening is slower than the morning

For each expressway we add up the LTA journey time estimates for every stretch and average the two directions. On the PIE, a term time weekday came to 50.5 minutes at 8am, 48.5 at 2pm and 59.0 at 6pm. That makes 6pm the slowest hour of the day, ahead of 5pm at 51.9 minutes. On weekends, 6pm took 45.2 minutes.

The same shape shows on most other expressways, at different sizes. Average weekday minutes at 8am, 2pm and 6pm:

• PIE: 50.5, 48.5 and 59.0
• AYE: 31.0, 30.6 and 33.5
• TPE: 17.9, 14.8 and 17.6
• BKE: 12.6, 10.5 and 14.8
• CTE: 17.6, 17.7 and 19.9
• SLE: 15.1, 13.1 and 16.7

The TPE is the exception: its slowest hour was 8am, just ahead of 6pm. On the others, 6pm was slowest. The KJE and ECP also peaked at 6pm, by smaller amounts. An average hides a lot of difference between days. In the week of 6 to 12 November, the PIE at 6pm on weekdays ran from 55.6 to 69.5 minutes, and the slowest evening on file is still Thursday 5 November, at about 74. You can pick any expressway on History: expressway travel times.

Buses: a morning peak, an evening peak and a midday bump

Across the 32 interchanges we monitor, the share of bus readings that were Standing only or Crowded on weekdays was highest at 8am (0.55%), then 7am (0.48%) and 6pm (0.44%). Midday had a smaller bump, at 0.28% at 1pm and 0.29% at 2pm, and 3pm was quiet at 0.08%. At weekends the shape changes. There is no morning rush: 8am was only 0.18%, and the highest hours were late morning and early afternoon, at 0.40% at 11am and 1pm.

These shares are small because buses at interchanges nearly always show seats. A few interchanges are very different, which we ranked in Which bus interchanges get crowded? and on History: bus crowding.

MRT and LRT: only two lines have enough readings

Platform crowding is the thinnest of our records, and the number of readings differs a lot by line. Only two lines had hundreds of weekday readings at a peak hour. On the East West Line, 67 of 468 readings at 6pm were rated high for crowding (14.3%), and 24 of 201 at 7am (11.9%). On the North South Line it was 49 of 413 at 6pm (11.9%) and 17 of 310 at 7am (5.5%). So the North South Line was clearly busier on platforms in the evening than in the morning, while on the East West Line the two hours were close. Other lines showed higher shares at some hours, such as 18.3% on the Downtown Line at 7am, but from only 82 readings, which is too few to compare. Line by line charts are on History: platform crowding.

What to compare after 21 November

These are the numbers we will set the holiday weeks against: the PIE at 6pm on weekdays (59.0 minutes), the bus share at 8am on weekdays (0.55%), and the East West Line at 6pm (14.3% rated high). We plan to repeat them for the first weeks of the holidays and post the comparison in early December. If you want to check your own route before then, our MRT and LRT crowds guide and the bus arrival times guide show where to look in the app.

What this does not tell you

• This is one term and about four weeks of data. We have no earlier weeks to compare with.
• Averages hide big swings. Some evenings were much slower, for example 5 and 6 November, when storms and incident alerts were also high.
• Schools are only one part of weekday travel. We cannot separate school travel from work travel, so a change in the holidays could have several causes.
• Bus and platform figures are shares of readings, not counts of passengers. Many buses at interchanges are at the start of their trip, so crowding mid route is probably higher than we show.
• Platform readings differ by line and hour, and small samples can move a lot.

Common questions

How long does the PIE take at 6pm on a school day?

In PantauSivik records from 19 October to 13 November 2026, the PIE averaged 59.0 minutes at 6pm on weekdays, adding up Land Transport Authority estimates for both directions. At 2pm it averaged 48.5 minutes, and on weekend evenings 45.2.

When are Singapore buses most crowded on weekdays?

At the interchanges PantauSivik watches, the share of readings that were Standing only or Crowded was highest at 8am (0.55%), then 7am (0.48%) and 6pm (0.44%). Most buses at interchanges show seats at every hour.

When are the 2026 year end school holidays in Singapore?

MOE schools are on vacation from Saturday 21 November to Thursday 31 December 2026. Junior colleges and Millennia Institute go from Saturday 28 November to Thursday 31 December.

Will traffic be lighter in the school holidays?

We do not know yet. We recorded this term time baseline so that we can compare it with the holiday weeks, and we plan to post the comparison in early December.

Which MRT line was most often crowded at 6pm on weekdays?

Of the lines with enough readings, the East West Line had 14.3% of readings at 6pm rated high for crowding, and the North South Line 11.9%. Other lines had too few readings to compare.

Sources: PantauSivik's own records of public data, 19 October to 13 November 2026, in Singapore time. Travel times, bus load levels and platform crowd levels come from the Land Transport Authority DataMall. School dates are from the Ministry of Education.

See also: Year end school holidays checklist, Three long weekends coming up, History overview, Bus arrival times guide.